Have a Hard Time Leaving This One Alone. Give it Back Adobe!

A short continuation to my first article bitching about the removal of multiprocessing / multithreading from Adobe After Effects. In that article I picked a random project file which contained a mix of raster files, vector, and pre-rendered elements. That previous test was also on OSX. I wanted to give it another shot with some different variables and on PC. One render with all shape layers & vectors, and another with only Element 3D.

Here is what is going down:

PC Platform – Windows 7

Collected project locally to avoid network speed problems

Rendered to second separate local drive

Cache Folder on RAID array

Closed all other applications, including web browsers, antivirus

Cleaned all caches before render in both versions

Rendered as DPX sequences

Test I – 1080p 60fps Vector Graphic Rendering

I took a scene from the F-Stops vs. T-Stops video I created recently. This sequence was 100% vector graphics & AE shapes. Here are the results:

After Effects CC 2014After Effects CC 2017

So once again this matches my results previously with raster images. Adobe CC 2014’s ability to utilize many more cores results in a much faster render time v CC 2017 which to my knowledge, is single threaded at render time. This is showing a 43% slower render in CC 2017. I wish the 2014 Render Engine app could just open any file but that’s just not possible to implement. Unless you want to save down versions to older, which depending on what you’re doing could lose some effects support.

Test II – 720p 24fps Element 3D Rendering

For this test I plucked a shot from my John Wick / Star Wars Mashup project. The shot involves a flyby of a tie fighter with all the good options in Element turned up to maximum, with super sampling up as high as it goes. The background plate is just footage so the only processing really going on here is within Element.

After Effects CC 2014After Effects CC 2017

Aha, something interesting & positive. The only thing going on in this shot is a 3D tie-fighter rendered with Element 3D over a plate. CC 2017 renders faster, over a 5% increase in speed. I wonder if it is due to the core of After Effects CC 2017 being further optimized than CC 2014, and rendering via a plugin takes away the default renderer bottleneck.

So, I did learn something. If you are exclusively using Element 3D withno 2D shape layers or raster images you will see some improvement in the rendering time. For comps that have 2D elements, shape layers, and raster images, you will still see a much slower render when using CC 2017.

I ran out of time (or patience) to do one last thing on my list which is doing Cineware rendering tests within After Effects. I’ll get to that in another post.